GCSE Computer Science: Application of Computational Thinking (1CP2/02): Preparing For The Examination

Updated ICE, v1.9:
Instructions for the Conduct of the Examination (ICE) - Summer 2025

Role specific checklists:
Role specific checklists have been developed for:

• 1CP2 02 IT Technician Checklist
• 1CP2 02 Examination Officer Checklist
• 1CP2 02 Invigilator Checklist

• Centre Examination Schedule form
• Practical Programming Statement (PPS) form

No -  the Centre Examination Schedule Form should only be submitted if you are running an additional exam session outside of the published time due to any examination clashes, for example.

Where more than one examination session is held for GCSE Computer Science Paper 2, centres must:

• keep an accurate record of candidates present at each session,
• produce a schedule showing the times of each examination session to be held for their candidates on the day of the examination. The Centre Examination Schedule form must be submitted by 31 March in the year of entry.

Centres must submit a Practical Programming Statement form (PPS) by 31 May for the year of the entry, failure to submit this form may result in malpractice/maladministration. 

The Practical Programming Statement (PPS) will need to be completed by the Head of Centre where the private candidate is registered to take their examination. 

Centres are required to complete a Practical Programming Statement (PPS), which confirms they have taken reasonable steps to ensure that each student sitting our GCSE in Computer Science has had the opportunity to demonstrate their programming skills in terms of design, write, test and refine programs in Python during their course of study.

The PPS should be completed by a member of the senior leadership team at the centre. Failure by a centre to provide a completed PPS to us in a timely manner will result in potential malpractice and/or maladministration. The completed PPS must be submitted to us by the 31st of May in the year of the examination.  

This is dependent on your IT infrastructure within your centre. If your centre uses Windows, special exam logons for each candidate can be created. These would use group policy set ups that disable internet access and enable access to secure disk space for read/write of files.  

In other infrastructures, such as Mac or ChromeBook, the precise approach will need to be designed to provide the required security as well as the required functionality for the candidate(s). If you have specific concerns or questions, please contact us and we will endeavour to provide support - however the IT infrastructure and its management is a centre responsibility.

Each Secure User Area should have read, write & run privileges and a storage space of at least 50mB. There should be no access to the internet available. Within each secure user area there needs to be a top-level folder named (as per the instructions in the Instructions for Conducting Examinations (ICE)):

CENTRENUMBER_CANDIDATENUMBER_SURNAME_FORENAME

and in this folder two folders created:

STUDENT CODING - where the secure coding files and digital version of the Programming Language Subset (PLS) will be placed on the day of the exam

COMPLETED CODING - where the candidate saves their work

Candidates should also only be able to access their own Secure User Area and not anyone else's.

Yes - you can check the secure coding files and that the digital version of the Programming Language Subset (PLS) are present in each Secure User Area and that the correct folders have been created but you must not open the secure coding files. You should also ensure that the restrictions designed to be in place are working correctly (e.g. no internet, no access to open shared folders in your centre). You should also ensure that all applications are installed and functioning correctly, and the read/write privileges are in place - everything except the existence of the exam secure coding files can be tested in advance of the exam and this is strongly recommended.

Yes - you can create back up user exam accounts - although most centres would have automated scripts to create accounts. It may be that a less automated setup would leave the opportunity open for individual setups to not have been thoroughly tested or set up. It is advised that sufficient testing should be done ahead of the exam in order to avoid the need for the use of a spare exam user account.

The Integrated Development Environment (IDE) being used should be one that candidates are familiar with using and should show line numbers. The collaborative functionality needs to be disabled. The IDE must also be clear of any previous work and enable candidates to create, amend, run and test/debug code. 

This depends upon the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that you have chosen to use to teach your candidates. For most commonly used IDEs, if you run in an environment that has no internet connection - this will block any collaborative tools that would work normally when internet connection is available. If you have a specific IDE that you are concerned about contact us and we will try to help. 

You cannot use any 'online' help as no access to the internet is allowed for this assessment. Some Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) like Thonny & PyCharm have extensive functionality that is available offline. If any help relies on an internet connection, then you would need to take this into account when preparing your candidates because the no internet connection is and always will be a fundamental and critical requirement to adhere to our exam regulations for this qualification. 

Yes - all the 'local' help functionality of your Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is available including autocomplete & colourisation.

No - this will depend on your local setup at your centre. The reason that the IT Technician checklist includes working with the subject teacher is so that the subject teacher can exercise all the requirements of the candidates and ensure that nothing is missing. Testing of this is beneficial in advance of the exam.

This will depend on your infrastructure and IT resources at your centre, but the coding files must be shared securely and not via email. 

There is no 'requirement' from Pearson that candidate files are saved to the local disk of the machines your candidates will be using. If this policy is a requirement within your centre, as long as security regarding the USBs and secure material stored on them is maintained it will be your centre's decision. If there were to be an exception to this policy, such as in the case of delivering an onscreen assessment, we would advise that the saved files are maintained on a remote secure drive as most roaming profiles are. Your internal process for maintaining security of the candidates' work will depend upon your individual infrastructure and IT expertise. 

Your internal process for maintaining security of the candidates' work will depend upon your centre's infrastructure and IT expertise. The use of USBs could be an option but only if this is a requirement for your centre. If security of the USBs can be maintained at all times, it will be your decision. 

The approved person(s) in the centre need to access the secure coding files in order to place them into the candidate secure user area - but candidates must not be permitted any access to the secure folder/files until the start of the exam session. The contents of the secure download must be placed in the ‘STUDENT CODING’ folder, there is no reason to look at the contents. 

Yes - it is your decision if you want to create a further folder called 'ORIGINAL' or something equivalent into which you can place a copy of the seed-code files, this does not advantage any candidate and does not compromise the assessment in any way - the reason we proposed a simple two folder approach was to avoid any confusion. Whatever works best in this regard can be adopted as your approach. 

Yes - this does not in any way compromise the security of the assessment or the validity of the assessment. If your candidates are prepared in this way and expect this when they take the exam, then this is an acceptable set-up.

As the computers that candidates are using should not have access to the internet, this should not be possible. If there is anything scheduled that might impact the performance of the computers, this should be, where possible, suspended until after the exam. 

No - as the computers should be running internally, no firewall issues would be expected. Any intranet or internal network processes that may affect the computers should be suspended if possible. 

No - but it is recommended that all invigilators read and are aware of the Instructions for Conducting Examinations (ICE) and role checklist ahead of exam day so that they are informed about their role and responsibilities for the assessment. JCQ recommend that a specialist invigilator is appointed. The specialist invigilator should have proven IT skills and experience in conducting onscreen tests and be assisted by at least one other invigilator. 

There must be at least one invigilator for each group of 20 or fewer candidates taking onscreen tests. If these requirements cannot be met it is important that you inform Pearson of this by email on uk.special.requirements@pearson.com and Pearson will make a decision whether the scripts can be accepted.

This is not a requirement but would be a good preparation activity if your centre can facilitate this.

Within the JCQ Instructions for Conducting Examinations (ICE) (Appendix 1, Section 6), it is stated that: 

Each workstation must be isolated by a minimum space of 1.25 metres measured from the nearest outer edge of one screen to the next, unless the monitors are positioned back-to-back or separated by dividers or protected by privacy screens. 
Under certain circumstances 1.25 metres may prove to be an insufficient distance to prevent candidates seeing, intentionally or otherwise, the work of others. The principal objective is to ensure that no candidate’s work can be overseen by others. Appropriate steps must be taken to ensure that this can be achieved.

As candidate work will be submitted using Learner Work Transfer (LWT), you will not receive an Attendance Register for this exam. It is important that the candidate status on LWT is updated to reflect whether each candidate was present or absent from the exam.

1. A hard copy of the question paper.  
2. The Programming Language Subset (PLS) which will be provided with the question paper as well as having an electronic version. 
3. Digital versions of the required coding files for the examination. 
4. Secure user area login details if required. 

The digital version of the question paper will be released on the Secure Download Service, 60 minutes before the published start time of the exam. 

The hard copies of the question paper should arrive no later than one week before the exam. You can track the delivery of your centre's exam papers through Edexcel Online (EOL) by: 

• selecting the qualification from the drop-down, e.g. GCSE 
• then selecting 'Question Paper Despatch' 
• then selecting the series required and clicking 'Go' 

This will then show you all the question paper packages that are pending/sent to your centre.  
You can also set up exam paper despatch email notifications by signing up through Edexcel Online under your centre account details.  

On the day of the exam, you can download a digital version of the question paper that will be released 60 minutes before the published start time of the exam. 

With regards modified papers not all papers will be despatched at the same time; they will be sent as soon as they are ready. If it is a late order, then they may not arrive until the day of the exam, or they will be sent electronically on the day of the exam.

The intention of the Programming Language Subset (PLS) from the outset was to 'scope' the vast Python language set into a manageable subset, reasonable for teachers to cover and sufficient for the assessment to capture the requirements. We have made some clarifications but not expanded the scope.

This can be found on the qualification website under Course Materials and then Exam Materials. On the day of the exam, a hard copy will be included within the question paper. 

These will be released at 8am on the day of the exam and can be accessed either by using the Secure Download Service (SDS) via Edexcel Online (EOL) or using the gold-padlock credentials on the qualification website under Course Materials and then Exam Materials.   

If you are unable to download the secure coding files on the day of the exam, please contact us (Tel: 0344 463 2535) so that we can arrange for our Secure Print Team to SFT over the files.  

It is fine in the exam room(s) to have this reminder given (printed with the candidate login details) and it would also be appropriate to remind candidates verbally at the start of the exam session too. (For example, we say take Q01.py and save as Q01FINISHED.py)

All four copies of our practice papers can be used as exemplar materials for the instructions, and we do not expect these instructions to change.

The online system for requesting modified papers will accept orders all the way up to an exam date. If the deadline has been missed for requesting modified papers, the most important thing initially is to get your order submitted using Edexcel Online. Without this order we won’t be able to begin work on any materials you require. Where at all possible we will attempt to fulfil your order. If you make a late order, please email the modified formats team on additional_requirements@pearson.com to advise them of the modified paper order number. We will advise you if the paper is not available.